The GOR 26, which started on Thursday, February 26, 2026 at Rheinische Hochschule Köln, successfully concluded today, Friday, February 27, after more than 80 presentations, poster presentations, and workshops. Around 250 participants attended the conference. The organizers, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online-Forschung e. V. (DGOF) and RH Köln, are very satisfied with their joint event.
As with every GOR, the presentation of the Conference Awards for outstanding achievements in the field of online research receives significant attention:
The GOR Impact and Innovation Award (formerly GOR Best Practice, sposered by DGOF) was presented for the first time for an outstanding market research case from initiation to implementation to Sarah Goto & Thomas Kopf (MCM Klosterfrau), Oliver Tabino (Q-Agentur für Forschung), Jonathan Heinemann (horizoom), David Ranftler & Paul Wesendonk (xelper) for their project Scaling Qualitative Depth: A Large-Scale Validation Study Comparing AI-Moderated Interviews and Conventional Surveys in OTC Pharma Research.
Since 2010, the GOR Poster Award has been presented annually to the best posters submitted to GOR. This year, the award, endowed with €500, went to the contribution Comparing Probability and Nonprobability Online Surveys: Data Quality and Fieldwork Processes by Emma Fössing, Lukas Olbrich, Stefan Zins and Jörg Drechsler (IAB).
A total of 22 posters competed in the contest. The winners were selected by an expert jury based on scientific relevance, methodological quality, and presentation.
The GOR Poster Award 2026 was sponsored by horizoom. We thank the sponsor for their support and warmly congratulate the award winners on their recognition.
The GOR Thesis Award has also been presented annually since 2015. This year’s award for the best Master’s thesis was given to Anna Fuchs (LMU) for her project AI for Survey Design: Generating and Evaluating Survey Questions with Large Language Models. In the competition for the best PhD thesis, Leah von der Hyde (LMU) prevailed with her work Who Counts? Survey Data Quality in the Age of AI. The sponsor of the GOR Thesis Award 2026 is Bilendi. The winners also receive prize money of €500 each.
The Best Paper Award 2025 of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online-Forschung and sponsered by DGOF was also presented. The award, worth €500 and honoring outstanding scientific contributions to online research, went this year to Simson, J., et al. (2025) for the paper Preventing Harmful Data Practices by using Participatory Input to Navigate the Machine Learning Multiverse. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 806, 1–30.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713482
Best of Fams winners: The trainee market and social research assistants from Kaufmännische Berufsschule 4 in Nürnberg Olivia Hettrich, Florian Moog, Leon Urban, and Maximilian Aulbach presented their award-winning FAMS project: Ergebnispräsentation. Zufriedenheitsstudie Alten-Akademie 2024.
Contact:
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online-Forschung e.V. (DGOF)
Huhnsgasse 34b, D-50676 Köln
Tel.: +49(0)221-27 23 18-180
Further information about DGOF and GOR at: www.dgof.de
and www.gor.de
